Assembly of wire harnesses is a labor-intensive task that involves selection of each wire, marking, positioning, configuring, and bundling the several wires that make up the harness. Almost all harnesses are made today by manual assembly. Such assembly is tedious and time-consuming.
While it is possible to build machines which will assemble a wire harness in a single configuration, the cost of such machinery is prohibitive for assembly of small lots of different wire harnesses. These dedicated, single task machines do not use robots, since the tasks performed are invariant. There is a need for a system with flexible automation to make wire harnesses in small lots with ease of reconfiguration allowing production of a variety of wire harnesses. Robotic assembly provides this flexible approach.
A robotic wire harness assembly system is described in copending application U.S. Ser. No. 741,318, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,677,734. In such a system, wire is de-reeled, cut, and marked in the Wire Preparation subsystem using a commercial wire marker. From the wire marker, the cut/marked wire (having a length of about 8 inches to 10 feet) is loaded into a canister in a work bay of the Wire Reeling subsystem. A robot connecting the Wire Termination subsystem with the Wire Reeling subsystem picks up the loaded canister containing the wire segment (with both ends exposed) and configures each end (in a pin, lug, or other termination) as required for the particular harness under construction. The canister is, then, placed in a bay of the Queuing subsystem where it is available to a layup robot in the Wire Layup subsystem. The robot inserts one end of the wire into a connector or other tool on a layup formboard, and the wire is routed through gates to position that wire in the harness in a predetermined, reproducible shape. The second end of the wire is then inserted into another connector or tool to secure the other end. The empty canister is returned to the Queuing subsystem and, subsequently, to the work bay of the Wire Reeling subsystems, and the process for handling each wire continues until the harness is complete. The layup robot, using a variety of tools, completes all required operations including "tie wrapping."
The robot control preferably is achieved through a Data Generator control program running on a computer with down-loaded control data passing to the internal systems controller (CPU or microprocessor) of each unit in the system. The only significant manual tasks which remain are the lay-out of the proper formboard configuration (i.e., positioning the turn gates and connector blocks) and the resupply of materials to the various machines. Manual override of the system or any subsystem is possible.
In such a robotic wire harness assembly system, formboard tools are required to hold the wires that are laid out by the robot. The present invention relates to one such tool for allowing breakout of one or more wires from the harness.